


Pulvis et umbra sumus

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 16:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting neither expected would be a goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulvis et umbra sumus

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Death of Optimus Prime and prior canon.

 

 

 

 

The way night seemed to linger over this place bothered him, like the darkness itself was resisting daylight. It reminded Sunstreaker of the last time he’d been here, when the Swarm had overrun the planet, boiling out of every hole in the ground, seething across the surface like an infection.

He could feel something, out here, on the very edge of the settlement, where the few shanty houses, reclaimed rubble stacked into ersatz walls, really, hunched. The ground itself felt wrong under his feet, like it vibrated to some sinister timbre. In the pre-dawn darkness, he could hear--faintly, but unmistakably--a restless rustling, the planet itself writhing, moving, casting tentacles up from the ground against any intrusion. They were just beyond the verge of his sight, just where the inky blackness of night proper still held sway.

Bob whined, his claws clittering over the broken pavement as he hid behind Sunstreaker’s legs, mandibles clicking unhappily.

“Easy, boy,” Sunstreaker murmured. He didn’t know why he didn’t turn to leave, why his optics lost themselves in the pre-dawn grey. Some ancient habit, stand-to, waiting for a dawn assault, he thought. Or maybe he was waiting for something else to materialize from the darkness. He didn’t know. All he knew was just that feeling of expectancy, waiting, keeping him there.

The place seemed to breathe, subsiding under his feet, exhaling the rancid air of a planet that had glutted itself on too many deaths.

Sunstreaker’s had been one of them. Maybe it wanted him back, maybe it felt cheated and was calling him back.

A scuff on the ground behind him. Sunstreaker whirled, hand reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, closing on air with a click. He scowled. Stupid Bumblebee and his stupid policy that only mechs on official patrols could go armed. He’d probably been talked into that by Metalhawk as some sop to the newcomers.

Newcomers, who hadn’t fought in the war, who hadn’t, as far as Sunstreaker was concerned, earned the right to have opinions. Not that Metalhawk did, either, in his estimation. He still remembered their fight after Dabola, before Metalhawk flew off, each spitting hard and broken words at each other.

It hadn’t bothered him, much. They’d never been friends, after all.

Sunstreaker didn’t have any friends.

Except Bob.

Bob, who skittered forward, now, straining at his leash, the fine links of the titanium chain clicking taut, his antennae waving eagerly.

“Sunstreaker.” Sideswipe’s voice, hammered flat of all emotion. “Didn’t expect to see you out here.”

Sunstreaker frowned, busying himself with Bob’s chain. “Why not?” Go on, he thought, call me on it.

Sideswipe shrugged, holstering his gun: on official NAIL patrol, apparently. Must be nice, Sunstreaker thought. “I don’t know. Curfew?”

“Curfew,” Sunstreaker scoffed. Like he’d ever done curfews. The way they tried so hard to tie everyone up with all these rules, after so many millennia of fighting, was ludicrous. Like they couldn’t be trusted out after dark. Like he couldn’t take care of himself. They’d fought to be free, and the first thing Bumblebee did was to encumber them all with things like curfews.

“We have to represent order,” Sideswipe said. “If we want the NAILs to trust us, we need to follow the same rules we expect them to.”

 

Sunstreaker rolled his optics, holding out his wrists. “So, arrest me.”

“What?”

Sunstreaker shrugged. “Calling your bluff. If I’m breaking the rules, arrest me.”

“You’re not--I mean, it’s just that this part of the settlement isn’t really safe.”

Sunstreaker made a show of looking around. “I’ve seen worse.” Dabola, for example, where any movement brought rounds whizzing at your head. He could name a thousand places more dangerous than this. But none, perhaps, quite as disturbing. He’d only died here, nowhere else.

“That’s not the point,” Sideswipe said. “We’ve all seen worse. We should be working on seeing better.”

Sunstreaker jerked a thumb at the wilderness behind him. He could still hear a distant, hushed sound of the unquiet darkness. “Is that supposed to be ‘better’?”

“It’s our home, Sunstreaker,” Sideswipe said, only letting his optics follow the thumb for a brief klik, as though he wanted to keep his gaze within some safe mystical circle of civilization. As if that could protect him.

“Home doesn’t want us here,” Sunstreaker said.”In case you haven’t noticed.”

Sideswipe made a dismissive expression. “You’re starting to sound like Drift, you realize.”

It was intended to sting. It stung. But Sunstreaker had been through worse than that, too. “Better than sounding like Bumblebee,” he parried.

“He’s not entirely wrong,” Sideswipe retorted.

“Just mostly,” Sunstreaker said.

Sideswipe bristled. It was the most familiar thing Sunstreaker could remember seeing since he’d returned, something that called to mind all too vividly all those years they fought together, the rivalry simmering just below the surface. It made him homesick somehow. In the war, he’d at least known what he was doing, who he was. But then the Machination had gotten him and he’d...lost himself.

“I killed him!” Sideswipe blurted. “I killed him, for you. Because I thought I understood. I thought I knew what you’d been through.” No need to specify who. Sunstreaker knew who he meant. He’d been there, a sliver of his awareness still linked across time and space to Hunterp--what was left of Hunter, at any rate, but that was more than what was left of him. He’d seen Sideswipe’s face, looking into his/Hunter’s eyes, torn between gratitude and a helpless hate.

“No one can know what I’ve been through,” Sunstreaker said, mouth twisting. And they should be glad enough for that.

“...I’ve realized that,” Sideswipe said. He sounded deflated, somehow, as though Sunstreaker’s words had burst the bubble of emotion and he was left empty. “But even that’s something.”

“Hnh.” Sunstreaker looked back at the horizon, where the sun was starting to attenuate the dark to violet greys, neither affirming or denying.

“Sunstreaker,” Sideswipe said. He stepped forward, reaching out a hand, black and battered, the palm seamed with dirt. “I lost everything when you died. You were the center for so long. I wanted to be you, always: big, bright, confident, capable. And then you...were gone.” The optic shutters blinked, distressed.

“Died,” Sunstreaker said, flatly. “I died.” He could remember the pain of it, the detonation tearing him open, charring him black in its heat and whiteness. He’d always heard of the stupid metaphor, burning one clean purifying through heat. He hadn’t been purified: he’d been blackened, pulverized, torn apart and made to suffer.

“Died. Yeah.” Sideswipe’s mouthplates rolled in, and he seemed to chew on them for a moment. “Point is, I lost, like, I don’t know, the thing I’d built my world around, myself around.” His hands spread, like a slow falling-apart. That rivalry between them, binding them together no matter how far apart they were. Sunstreaker thought, abruptly, of the way the other had accompanied him to Clench’s arena, dogged and loyal, even then.

Sunstreaker snorted.”Sound like you were in love with me.” It was meant as an insult, but as the words left his vocalizer, they seemed to pull something, pluck at something deep in his chassis, and what started as a sneer faded into something...else.

And looking at Sideswipe, the stricken look on his face, the optics shimmering and wide, he knew something similar must have been plucked inside him, too.

Bob scraped at the pavement, digging for something, his claws scrabbling. It was a welcome distraction, both their optics moving with relief to watch the insecticon, happy to have the moment shattered.

Sunstreaker felt shattered, again, as though another bomb had gone off, but this time, within his spark. All this time. All this time and he’d never known, never seen. And now he did know, and he did see, and he knew it was too late: neither he nor Sideswipe were who they had been. “I...I should get back,” he said, weakly. He felt unsteady, and it had nothing to do with the tainted ground he stood in.

Sideswipe nodded. “I....uh...patrol.”

They nodded at each other, neither moving, knowing this was a change, a turning point, a fulcrum which could shift things.

“I hear Rodimus is getting a ship together,” Sunstreaker blurted, suddenly, grasping at words to extend the moment.

”I heard that, yeah,” Sideswipe said, offering nothing else,

”We could, you know, go. Get off planet. Side by side, fighting together.” It sounded...really good right now, the most inviting thing in the world, no longer one above the other, but the two of them equals. Maybe this was peace.

Sideswipe shook his head, the movement slow as though it hurt. “I can’t. I have to stay. They need someone here, you know? Someone with experience.” And it was clear he didn’t mean just experience with a gun, or patrols. “You could...?” An offer, tentative, a bridge made out of straw.

Sunstreaker cycled a vent of air, hand twisting in Bob’s leash. He knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t stay here, not now. Not with what this place is, with who he was. He felt the moment collapse between them. It felt like the bridge, falling apart, plate by plate, under his feet all those years ago. He didn’t have to say anything: Sideswipe could read it on his face.

”Yeah,” Sideswipe said, the word gravely and rough, acknowledging, and wanting not to accept. “Well, good luck out there, you know?” He shifted on his feet, preparing to leave. Bob caught the movement, and wriggled toward him, tugging at the leash.“I hope you find what you’re looking for out there.”

”Hope so too,” Sunstreaker said. Words were just incapable right now, or he was incompetent with them. He couldn’t articulate what he wanted to, so he grabbed at the first words, cheap sentiment. And Bob surged forward as he stepped, scrambling on the pavement, antennae wiggling, eager to head back to base, while behind them, the sun clawed pink wounds on the face of the sky.


End file.
